At this point, Android phones are officially being created faster than human babies. Samsung's Galaxy phones have been the blueprint for the last year, literally. The Galaxy S II is the new blueprint—and it's a very nice one.

The fastestest Android phone I've ever used, bar none, no holds barred, etc., thanks to a crispy Gingerbread core and a 1.2 dual-core chip paired with 1GB of RAM. I can get used to this kind of whiplash. It's stupid thin, like thinner-than-an-iPhone-4 thin. The camera is like, good: the shots (though the iPhone 4's tweaks makes its photos more pleasant), the 1080p video (which murderfaces the iPhone 4's indoors) and Samsung's more camera-y interface. (Samples can be had in the gallery below, or here.) Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus display continues to be lovely, if slightly lacking for pixels.

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If this is what we can expect as baseline for the next 6 months of Android phones, well, I can live with that.

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What I can't live with: Samsung's terribly gauche custom software/interface, TouchWiz. There isn't an Android phonemaker on the planet who outdoes what Google's already doing with Android. (Not to say that Android's interface is good: Watching a serious nerd / web developer friend struggle with a clean build of Android this past week was eye-opening in that regard. Normal people, sure, Android's confusing. But to a real nerd too? Hrm.) I really wish Samsung would figure out whatever alchemy is required to produce plastic that doesn't feel like a terribly mean joke. The incongruity is jarring: The best of technology, the worst of materials. Ugh.

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This is the international version of the Galaxy S II, so it's not available in the US yet—and it'll probably carry a different name depending on your carrier, just like the original Galaxy. Update: I've confirmed I used the Exynos 4210-powered model, not the Tegra 2 variant.